Life sciences called growth story for region

Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis, left, and Travis McCready, CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, compare their heights during the Good Morning North Central Breakfast at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Leominster on Friday morning. The 6-foot-7 Evangelidis won the showdown. Both were the main speakers at the breakfast. See video at sentinelandenterprise.com.
SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / ASHLEY GREEN

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LEOMINSTER -- At the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce breakfast Friday morning, members heard about one of the biggest problems facing the region, opiate addiction, as well as something promising for the region to focus on, the life-sciences industry.

Guest Travis McCready, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, spoke about what his center hopes to do in partnership with the chamber in terms of growing the life-sciences industry in North Central Massachusetts.

"We must continue to focus on regionalization," McCready said. "We have this unfortunate habit of thinking innovation only takes place in Boston and Cambridge, and we're going to blow that myth out of the water.

Travis McCready, president and CEO of the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center, speaks during the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce breakfast at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Leominster on Friday morning. Joining him is Sentinel & Enterprise Editor Charles St. Amand, the breakfast emcee. See video at sentinelandenterprise.com.
SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / ASHLEY GREEN

Sentinel and Enterprise staff photos can be ordered by visiting our SmugMug site.

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Thanks to a state initiative, the Life Sciences Center has a $1 billion Life Sciences fund to implement, including a grant fund of $500 million for public schools, a $250 million investment fund for research on drug discovery, therapies, and medical device proto-typing.

They also have a Tax Incentive Fund to help grow the number of employees in the life sciences sector in Massachusetts.

There are currently 65,000 life sciences employees in the state, McCready said, but the center wants to grow this number even more by bringing more manufacturing and research and development facilities to Massachusetts.

"We have a lot of kids coming out of vocational-technical schools, going into manufacturing, and earning $75,000 or $80,000 a year," he said.

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"Those are not good jobs, they're great careers."

Within the next few months, he said, the Life Sciences Fund is "going to put specific capital to work to ensure life sciences companies, in multiple stages and sectors, can find opportunities to engage in communities outside of Route 128."

The center has recently created a new position "focused on relationships with communities," McCready said, and Ben Bradford, who now holds the position, will be reaching out to the North Central Chamber in the coming months.

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Worcester County Sheriff Lew Evangelidis gave the second presentation of the morning, and he, like McCready, was focused on the future of the region.

Evangelidis, though, was coming from the perspective of public safety, and seeing lives destroyed by drug addiction every day in prison.

"The biggest threat to our public safety today is opioid addiction," he said, adding that the United States represents five percent of the world's population, but consumes 80 percent of the world's opioids.

He gave his audience an overview of the Face-to-Face Program, which shows young people what they would look like as long-term drug addicts.

Sentinel and Enterprise staff photos can be ordered by visiting our SmugMug site.

"Nobody ever thinks they're going to end up in prison," he explained, but 90 percent of the inmates in the Worcester County House of Correction are drug addicts who committed crimes to feed their addiction.

Evangelidis said he has given the Face-to-Face addiction awarenesss presentation to 210,000 youth in the state, trying to teach them about the dangers of Molly, "vaping," and prescription drugs.

"I'm trying to get in front of this by going to schools," he said. "I hope the program is reaching young people."

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